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Downvotes are starting to negatively affect the DN community

5 years ago from , Product Designer

example

People downvoting your comment simply because they do not agree with your opinion, makes it feel like the bad parts of reddit where everyone must share the same opinion or get downvoted to death. I don't think this is what DN stands for.

I also don't see many upsides to the downvotes, other than flagging spam or rude comments, which is clearly not the main way people will use this feature.

The solution for that can be different than downvotes, such as flags & more efficient reviewing by the moderators.

Thoughts?

7 comments

  • Ryan Hicks, 5 years ago

    Well, the definition of a downvote is that. To downvote something because you disagree with it.

    (in an online context) register disapproval of or disagreement with (a post or poster) by means of a particular icon.

    It appears people disagree with your statement hence the downvotes. I think the simple solution is to ignore it and not let your ego get in the way of a few downvotes online. Although, I do agree with your statement about Reddit and the groupthink.

    If DN were to revert to your suggestion in your last sentence it would require a lot of work for moderators to attend to. This a free community and already requires a lot of work, money, and time to maintain the site. In its current iteration, the voting system allows the community to handle the moderation to an extent, which is what an online community should be doing.

    -1 points
    • Account deleted 5 years ago

      Not when people abuse it, which is what is happening.

      -3 points
      • Ryan Hicks, 5 years ago

        Define abusing it and show some examples. I haven't seen it yet, but then again I don't browse the comment section as much as other people.

        2 points
        • Account deleted 5 years ago

          I don't really have time to go and dig through threads but if you can be bothered just check out the bottom of the comment section on a bunch of posts. Lots of them are downvoted for no reason at all. It's odd.

          -2 points
    • Ariel Verber, 5 years ago

      these comments by all of you are exactly what i'm talking about. i have no idea why people downvoted you, but it seems as if you said something that might be offensive or inappropriate, which is not the case. IMO it takes off from the experience in DN. 'to ignore it' is not the way problems should be solved when there are alternatives, and in my opinion the alternative to revert to the previous version is better.

      -1 points
  • Account deleted 5 years ago

    I completely agree. Please remove them. It just increases the echo chamber effect.

    -1 points
  • Ken Em, 5 years ago

    Upvoting = I like this thing, Downvoting = I don't like this thing.

    This was pretty well discussed in the official announcement.

    https://www.designernews.co/stories/97168-introducingdownvoting-

    -2 points